Owens’s upbringing was by no means conventional, despite his parents’ conservatism. His father’s interests ranged from Buddhism to astrology, and he did not allow a television in the house until Owens was sixteen. He required his son to read canonical works of literature and philosophy—Marcus Aurelius, Aristotle, Confucius—and to listen to classical music. “I developed this method of child-rearing after reading Thomas Wolfe’s statement ‘You can’t go home again,’ ” John told me. “I always interpreted that to mean it’s because you outgrow things. Well, I always wanted to expose Rick to things he couldn’t grow out of.”
As a boy, Owens often resented this regimen of enforced cultural appreciation, but he has since come to value it. “I have so much to be grateful for because of that,” he told me. “No TV, and all those books and records. It’s like we were on a desert island in Porterville, and all we had was Debussy, Wagner, Proust, Huysmans, Pierre Loti. And they were stored in the basement, like a bunker. There’s something very insulated about that life that has stayed with me. Because my life is still like that: I don’t go outside of my personal interests, my personal nucleus of people, much.” Owens attributes elements of his fashion aesthetic to the art and literature that his father exposed him to—and he has tried to convince John of this. “I told him, ‘The reason I’m so into this is because I remember you showing me Japanese haiku and Japanese images, books of Japanese pictures; that’s why I have this austerity that appeals to me,’ ” Owens recalled. “I always loved how the Japanese appreciated things that were damaged; they would elevate the idea of something damaged and make it beautiful, and I said, ‘That is so all about what I am. And that’s because of you.’ ”
Elegant Monsters
Behind Rick Owens’s rock-and-roll look.
Mar 10, 2008